How do you become successful with forex trading? Before you sign up for a forex course, you need to make sure you are willing to put in the hard work to get the results you want. While everyone can make a success of forex trading, you need to have the right attitude and develop a specific set of skills. Today Trade & Train dives deep into the qualities you need to develop to be a successful forex trader. 

1) Discipline

This is perhaps the most important quality you need before you start forex trading. Without dedication to your long-term goals, the markets can easily spook you. And when you are in a panic, you make stupid financial decisions. Stupid financial decisions destroy portfolios. That’s why we teach trading psychology as a key part of our Essential Trader course.

Basic human psychology tells us that people tend to jump ship early on profit, hoping to secure it. Also that we either jettison recoverable losses in a panic, or hang on too long hoping for recovery. In short, human emotions are a disaster to a well-built trading portfolio.

Luckily, you have stops and limits on your side. You can establish where your risks and boundaries lie outside the heat of the moment, and let them work for you. No emotion, no flighty responses, just pure strategy all the way.

2) Goals

Yes, yes- isn’t the goal to make money? However, that’s still a little too nebulous. For smart forex trading, you need to have your goals front and centre. This will help you manage your portfolio, and stay the course when times are hard. If you don’t have clear goals- little or large- in mind, then you may leave your forex course enthused, but with no real idea where to start or how to keep going through market ups and downs. That’s why we designed our essential trader forex course to guide you through trading your plan and how to manage the risk in your portfolio to ensure goal-orientated growth.

3) Hunger to learn

You don’t need to be an economic expert to make forex trading work for you- that’s why we offer our beginners forex course, after all. While forex is open to everyone, however, you need to feel secure in the basics to make it work for you. And, as time passes, you will want to keep up not only with current market news so you can make informed decisions, but you will also want to lean into the specifics of what interests you. Remember that forex is a global arena, where even small financial shifts in one country can affect other currencies. 

Without a thorough grounding in what you’re doing, you won’t be able to manage your portfolio to match your goals, and you’re liable to let emotions override rational planning. There’s plenty of help out there for you to leverage. From economic data feeds on Twitter and Facebook and community boards to having an experienced trader as a mentor, the finance world is at your fingertips. But you’ll have to be open to exploring it. Technical analytics and trade selection will become your friend. 

4) Persistence

So you have your goals, knowledge, and the discipline not to jump shop at the first wave? What else does forex trading need to make it successful? Persistence. With the wins will come losses, and it’s easy to get disheartened. But that’s all part of the process. With a good risk management strategy, you should have your bets hedged enough to not take massive hits when they come. Over time you will learn to cut losses fast, while letting your successes accumulate. It’s a learning curve every successful forex trader has to go through, and if you shy away from the losses, you’ll never learn how to make the big wins. Successful traders learn from their mistakes and show up every day to leverage the knowledge they brought for better things. 

5) Self-awareness

What kind of forest trading is right for you? This quality that successful forest traders need is closely tied to your discipline and goal orientation. In fact, it ties the other four key qualities we have mentioned together. Not everyone is comfortable at the same risk levels. Not everyone feels jumpy at the same point in a trade. You don’t share the same goals, and you learn in different ways.

When you know your ‘trader personality’, you can make smart, goal-orientated choices. You’ll know what risks you can carry, and what ones are too heavy for you. You know where to leverage your expertise, and how to stay focused on what really matters. Once you know exactly who you are, you can make smart, supported decisions that will ensure your trading future is a successful one.

These 5 key qualities are key to building a successful portfolio for forex trading over time. Which ones do you already have, and which will you need to work on? Our ‘Essential Trader’ forex course is built to help you develop the intuition and self-awareness you will need to successfully enter the forex arena, and seeks to develop these key traits as you learn more about the field. So if you’re not sure how to start forex trading, but you’re keen to take your financial goals to a whole new level, why not give it a try today? Our helpful team at Trade & Train is always on hand to help you with any questions you may have.